About

Chris is an entrepreneur, designer and lover of all things that go fast. Since he can remember he has always been pulling things apart to find out how they work and rarely putting them back together again. Not one to be told what to do he has always had an entrepreneurial spirit and always has a side project or business idea in the works. From printing t-shirts, to manufacturing wakeskates, importing laser cutting machines and reselling 3D Printers, Chris has always been look out for a way to make a living without being directed by a boss. After completing his degree in Industrial Design at Swinburne University he spent a good part of his 20’s working for two large product design consultancies, one in Melbourne and one in Sydney. He worked on products ranging from medical devices to sporting goods, some of which were awarded the Australian and international Design Awards.

After having enough of working for and building up other people’s companies he figured it was about time he set up his own shop. Chris founded his own product design consultancy, CP Design, in 2009 which he ran successfully for 3 years. As much as he enjoyed working under his own terms he realised there was a limit to what he could achieve in a small service business. Observing how his clients were taking simple product ideas and turning them into successful product based businesses he figured he could do the same with some of his own idea. The only problem was he didn’t have the capital required to tool up and mass produce them. That was until he discovered the relatively unknown process at the time called Crowd Funding. Chris watched in excitement as several simple product ideas’ raised tens of thousands of dollars on the website Kickstarter.com. When the first product produced by Scott Wilson, the Tik Tok raised just shy of a million dollars he figured he had to give it a go. His initial product idea required decent capital and was a bit too complicated for a first attempt at Crowd funding so when his friend Roby Ward said they should put a bottle opener on an iPhone case he through, why not! A weekend spent designing up a unique iPhone case with a trick slide out bottle opener blade and the Opena® Case was born. The Opena was a huge success and paved the way for Chris’ original idea of an iPhone mounting system to allow you to attach your iPhone to your bike. The Opena and the Quad Lock Mounting System were successfully funded on Kickstarter and with two solid products under their belt Chris and Rob set up Annex Products which they are currently working on turning into a very successful business.